Beyond the Wall, deep in the Haunted Forest.
The cold wind shrieked through the towering sentinel trees, whipping snowflakes into the air.
Snow had been falling for a long time. Thick drifts covered the woodland paths and bowed the low pine branches, leaving the entire world in cold shades of white and gray.
Jon Snow gripped Ygritte's wrist tightly as they struggled through the snow, sinking deep with some steps and barely at all with others.
Ghost followed close behind, his blood-red eyes scanning the dense woods around them warily.
Toward nightfall, they found a cave with a hot spring inside.
"Ser Alliser-"
Sitting deep inside the cave, Jon looked back toward its entrance, his eyes full of despair.
Beside him, Ygritte said gravely, "That old crow is dead for certain. You saw that thing yourself. It wasn't human. It was an Other..."
When she clearly spoke that ancient word, "Other," Jon felt as though the air around them had suddenly grown several degrees colder.
Others...
The figures from Old Nan's strange bedtime stories at Winterfell, in which truth and falsehood were impossible to distinguish.
Those terrifying beings who brought death and winter only in legends of the Long Night thousands of years ago.
Jon had always thought they were merely tales meant to frighten children, until he, Ser Alliser, and Ygritte saw one with their own eyes.
He had only escaped because Ser Alliser had risked his life to hold it off.
The legends were true. Was the Long Night truly about to descend again?
While Jon was gripped by immense fear, Ygritte began making rustling noises beside him.
Jon instinctively turned to look, and heat instantly flooded his face.
Ygritte was deftly undoing her heavy fur coat and the multiple layers of leather clothing beneath it.
"Hey, little